skin as soft as freshly washed sand,
the taste of salt upon my lips.
is it the same for you?
your eyes are the shards
of pale green glass strewn
along the beach,
wherever I go you watch me,
whatever I do you see.

like a prophet
wishing that only the best part
of his prophecy comes true,
I come to you, a faithful pilgrim,
head covered in the clouds
a galabiyya of air about my body.
I prostrate and entwine myself
with you in supplication,
like the finely knotted stitches
of a prayer rug
and I whisper that until you,
I had never been so religious.

your previous lovers
who cluttered their love with stone and mortar
will not be soon forgotten,
I who clutter you with words
am already,
like one breath following another.

all that I write on your skin
is washed out to sea
and returns on the wind
spread like the seeds of wild flowers
which grow among the rocky hills and ruins
like silent colorful pilgrims
up by the mosque of sidna 'ali
as the last remains
of a religion, and a memory,
and a love  and words.

The soil covers your bare feet in a powdery gray dust
like you've walked through an old fireplace that hasn't been cleaned
in the days since the last sacrifice.

There's enough wood to keep us warm through the coldest winter
or burn heretics to any cold heart's content.
This land is full of burnt offerings
and lucky rams
where it doesn't even take the word of god to sacrifice your child
just the word of man,
imperfect as the path you walk back from alone.

At 21, the Jordan River baptized me,
at last – my mother was exuberant:
her first-born saved from being
young, drunk, and beautiful. On the
third day, we swam in the Dead Sea.
I tried to float, but, my doubts weighed
me down and I did not rise. A week later,
I watched my mother kneel in the
Garden of Gethsemane, eyes closed,
head bent in fervent prayer. Afterwards,
we walked Via Dolorosa, her feet blistered
and so we exchanged sandals. I slipped hers
on and swallowed the ominous lump in my
throat. Even then, months before the brain
tumors, and hospital visits, I somehow knew
it was the last time I would walk in her shoes.
And so I walked the Way of Sorrows, missing
her impending absence even as she stood beside
me, as my hair turned white with grief for what
I knew was soon to come.

I don't understand why it's different for you.
Why it's different for you,
a people who have suffered,
a people who are Jew.  
To **** in your name,
a child who's turned blue.
In the dust from the home that once they held proud,
on land that you stole and then that you blew
to bits that are small
now smothered in blue
with sharp shrapnel that you
spread in the name of the few.

Why is it different?
Why, for the child who walked slowly through,
through the gates from the train,
on a ticket you knew
was only ever one way.
Did the mothers at Treblinka
deserve to go through,
the gates or the hurt
to watch their child torn
from a heart where they grew
to gasp a long breath
a gassed breath to the last,
smothered to blue.

Has nothing been learned by you, who cry true
from the past and the hurt, by
a people who are Jew.
The few who survived and echoed the cry,
a cry undisturbed by the thousands who died
a crime of our times, denied by the few,

I don't understand why it's different for you.
Why it's different for you,
a people who are Jew.  
In Gaza or Auschwitz,
the cry of a child
echoes eerily the same.
whether dying from gas
or bombs that you blame
on Hamas or God
the result is the same
the mother's heart ripped
and torn in two.

I don't understand why it's different for you.
To ****  the thousands
to get at the few.
I wonder if those who died for being Jew
would welcome the children of Gaza
the children who knew
they'd died just like them,
innocent and blue.

folded sunny side
Golden bellied bottle kiss
ruddy bubbles burst